How to Start a Podcast (Then vs Now) w/Alex Goldman

Today's bonus episode we invited Alex Goldman on to dive into his journey in the podcast space. From hosting one of the most popular podcasts online, to starting new with his current project Hyperfixed. How he got into podcasting in the first place, what it's like starting from scratch, and what he thinks about putting his podcast on YouTube. Links: Hyperfixed Podcast: https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/ Amityvilleville Podcast: https://www.radiotopia.fm/podcasts/amityvilleville Cake Episode: https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/listen/hyperfixed/the-lords-work A Story About a Mouse That's Also About Everything: https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/listen/hyperfixed/a-better-mousetrap Follow us on socials: Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin Waveform Threads: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Waveform Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waveformpodcast/?hl=en Waveform TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Intro/Outro music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  People have little curiosities that they just sit with, and I'm sure this is with you too, and it's with me, where I'm just like, a good example is, the town that I live in, they insist on not letting us put both paper recycling and bottle recycling in the same, on the same week. It's every other week. And it's like, now then I have like, tons of bottles just hanging out in my house. And I'm like, this is so dumb. Why do they do this? And when I was pitching Hyperfixed, I was like, this is the problem I want to find out the answer to. Why are they doing this to me?

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  All right. What is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast, a bonus episode. We're your hosts. I'm Marquez.

• 0:46Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm Andrew. And today, we've got a very special guest, one you've probably heard of quite a few times, if you're a long time Waveform listener. In fact, I think we could make the argument, Waveform doesn't exist without his work, Alex Goldman. Thank you for joining us today.

• 0:59Speaker 00

  Thank you. And that's incredibly kind of you. I really appreciate it.

• 1:02Andrew Manganelli?

  It really is true. I think, Marquez and I, one of the first podcasts that we both consistently listened to episodically was Reply All. And when we were thinking of making a podcast, like every YouTuber felt like they had to do at one point, we talked about Reply All all the time. So, a long time ago, we'll get into that later, but you've been podcasting in the space for over a decade. What got you started? And can you introduce yourself a little bit for those who don't know you?

• 1:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, my name's Alex Goldman. I'm the host of, currently the host of a podcast called Hyperfixed, and also a podcast about the Amityville movie series called Amityvilleville, which don't recommend anybody actually listen to. And I started in radio. I got a journalism degree and then didn't know what to do with my life. And I got really into like, I got into IT for five years, installing RAM, fixing computers, troubleshooting error messages, making sure-

• 1:56Andrew Manganelli?

  Turning it on and off again?

• 1:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Making sure everybody's McAfee virus scan was up to date in 2007 or whatever. And then, I always really loved radio, specifically like narrative radio. I mean, This American Life was a big deal for me. And then Radiolab came along, and that was a big deal for me. And my co-host and I were working at WNYC. I got a job at WNYC in 2010, which is the flagship sort of NPR station in New York City. I was working for a media analysis show. And the way that we actually got started making our own podcast was the station put together a contest, which was like, hey, everybody in the building can submit their idea for a show. And if we like it, we'll give you a little bit of

• 2:42Speaker 00

  money to make it. So, we submitted our idea, which was very different from what Reply All ended up being. But it was nominally an internet podcast. And they were like, yeah, we don't like this.

• 2:53Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, really?

• 2:54Speaker 00

  We're not interested. But my boss was like, listen, if you can just do it in the sort of corners of time that you are not making on the media, the show that you're making, we'll let you make it. We'll give you the studio space and we'll let you make it. So, we made sort of like a proto Reply All. It was called TLDR. I think we did like 30 some episodes of it. And then, while we were doing that, Alex Blumberg, who was a producer for This American Life for two decades, was like, hey, I want to go start my own podcast company. When I go, would you guys want to do what you're doing now over there? And so, we were like, well, absolutely. We would love, because WNYC, great station,

• 3:38Speaker 00

  I learned a lot working there. They were not, they're a nonprofit and they're very risk averse, you know? So, they were not in the market to like, fund the thing we were making. They were like, you guys are doing great. Keep up the good work. And we were like, yeah, we also make $44,000 a year. We're not really, this is New York City, we're not making enough money to live off of. So, from there, we just, we started Reply All, and it was kind of off to the races.

• 4:03Andrew Manganelli?

  What year was that? 2015?

• 4:06Speaker 00

  We started, I think the first episode came out in November of 2014.

• 4:10Andrew Manganelli?

  2014. We are YouTube people. Podcasting was around, but a bit newer back then, correct? And so, what was it like to get into that space that wasn't quite as giant yet?

• 4:20Speaker 00

  We had like, an incredible advantage for a couple of reasons. The first is, our boss was, at the same time we were making our show, making his own podcast about starting a podcast business. So, there was this like, there was this built-in marketing for the company he was making and for the thing he was putting out. And since he had, you know, 20 years on This American Life, which was the, at the time, it's crazy to look at the iTunes Top 100 now, because at the time, the top 20 were mostly public radio. It was like NPR, it was Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, and Radiolab. And so, when he goes off and does his own thing, it's big news. And the second thing is, our show came out during

• 5:02Speaker 00

  the original, like, nine-episode run of Serial. Our first episode came out during that couple of months.

• 5:08Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay.

• 5:09Speaker 00

  Which was incredibly lucky for us, because the moment that ended, when the people were like, hey, if you like that podcast, here are some other narrative podcasts, we ended up in all those articles.

• 5:19Andrew Manganelli?

  That's awesome.

• 5:20Speaker 00

  So, we had like, an incredible advantage. And I mean, also, just, the pool of podcasts in 2014 was vastly, orders of magnitude smaller than it is now.

• 5:32Andrew Manganelli?

  I think you can relate to that.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  That's something I always, I do see a lot of parallels between our like, journeys in creative production. One of them being like, yeah, the pool of stuff that's being made is way, way, way bigger now. So, back then, when there was way less stuff, it was, I guess, a bit easier to be discovered. But then also, there is the issue of discovery in podcasts in general. I feel like that's a totally different world where, and YouTube, it's a search engine, there's a built-in recommendation algorithm, all this stuff just sort of pushes the content out there. It's why we do a lot of YouTube videos. But I'm so curious about what it was like in the early days of podcasts. Like, was it mostly word of mouth? That's how I found Reply All. But how did people find podcasts when there were less podcasts?

• 6:12Speaker 00

  It's funny, because I find it so much harder now to get, to like, get the name of our show, my show out, than I did in 2014. I think it was mostly word of mouth, but we also had a strategy of like, we're going to try and get our stories on as many different shows as we can. So, we were pitching to This American Life. I think we got two stories on there. We got a story on Radiolab. And each time we did that, 50,000 new listeners, which is like, such, such a huge number.

• 6:44Andrew Manganelli?

  So, when you say on a story, you mean, one of your episodes posted on their feeds?

• 6:47Speaker 00

  Because we weren't on the radio, we didn't have to adhere to any particular length. So, we'd go to This American Life, and we'd be like, hey, we've got this 20-minute story. Would you guys like it? And then, we would sit there with them, and they would, because they have their own sort of particular editorial standards, they would go through it and rewrite massive swaths with us. And then, it would go on their show. But, you know, it was still the story, essentially, that we were, we were working on. And then, it would just bring so many people back to us.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  That feels like the early days of like, collaborations on YouTube, where there were only a few huge YouTubers, but it was a big deal when one of them would collaborate and show up on the other's channel, and they'd make a video together, collaborating with their styles or whatever it was. Obviously, with podcasts, it's a similar thing, where you had a story style, and they were like, oh, this is really fun. I want more of that. I'm going to go listen to that show. That's kind of how early YouTube felt to me. Podcast, or, sorry, collaborations were a huge deal, unlike the way that it is now, where it's kind of just like a casual, once-in-a-while thing.

• 7:48Andrew Manganelli?

  And like, the, how we always say, the benefit of collaboration, where it's, it's how does this benefit both sides of it? So, This American Life can get a story that interests their people, while also being able to be like, wow, I really enjoyed that. Where can I find more of this? And being able to come over to you?

• 8:03Speaker 00

  And I think another thing that was an advantage to us is just like, I think we got in on the ground floor of treating the internet like a place that people hang out, as opposed to just sort of this separate thing upon which you can do stuff. I think a lot of like, mainstream reporting in 20, between like, 2010 and 2014, is like, you won't believe this new Facebook that everybody's talking about. But we were like, okay, Facebook is, everyone knows what Facebook is. Let's talk about what's happening on Facebook, the people who are interacting on there. And like, being able to tell those stories really hooked people. And now, I think that's like, the way everyone thinks about the internet.

• 8:39Andrew Manganelli?

  We just assume that's what it is.

• 8:41Speaker 00

  Right.

• 8:41Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah. And like, Reply All was the podcast about the internet, which is this fun topic of, everyone knows what the internet is. It's like, specific, but also vague, where you can kind of cover anything that is going on. So, I mean, Waveform is kind of like that. We have tech. Tech comes out all the time, but at this point, anything can be considered tech. So, we really can, it gives us the benefit of being able to talk about whatever we want, while also being able to talk about maybe what's popular at the time.

• 9:08Speaker 00

  Right.

• 9:08Andrew Manganelli?

  Back then, how did you guys decide what topics you were going to, to cover, like, for a story? Because you went everywhere from feral hogs to, like, just everywhere.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Spam callers.

• 9:21Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 9:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, we were pitching stories all the time. And I feel like, even when you pitch stories, you know, it was, I would say, we had like, a one-success-out-of-10 situation. We would, we would like, do a preliminary interview, we would investigate a little bit, and just be like, this is a dead end. There was one of the 10 that we actually agreed was a story, would end up actually becoming an episode. But the way that we, we found them is always like, we had a bit of, like, a couple criteria, which is like, is there a question we want to answer? Is there something we don't know here? Do I care? Like, what are the stakes?

• 10:00Andrew Manganelli?

  Fair, yeah.

• 10:01Speaker 00

  And stakes can be really small. Some of the stakes, we did an episode, which was like, a woman whose website, her domain registration expired, and it got taken by like, a Japanese company. And I got a translator, who would wake up like, a couple days a week with me, at like, 5:00 AM, and we would call Japan and try and get the website back. So, I mean, it's a very, it's really about just kind of following our curiosity. If I'm not curious about a story, and there are definitely stories I've had to phone in a little bit over the course of, I'm sure that you guys are familiar with this.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:40Andrew Manganelli?

  What? No, what are you talking about?

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Well, there's varying levels. It's funny. In tech, I always say that like, most products, which is probably similar to most stories, are just kind of mid. And that's fine, but it's really exciting when there's a 10 out of 10 or a 1 out of 10.

• 10:54Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  So when a product is amazing or really, really great, that makes me excited to tell people about it, to share how great it is. And at the same time, when something is way worse than expected, I have the same energy of like, I need people to know how bad this is, just so we have that all like, in one place. And I feel like that's kind of the same thing for the way you're describing, like picking stories. Like, most of them, okay, yeah, it's kind of a dead end here, or there isn't much interest in this particular topic. But when you find the thing that you know is good, you want to chase it, and that ends up being the whole show.

• 11:25Speaker 00

  What you're describing is like my taste in movies. I like, like, really good movies. And then I like movies where I'm just like, I'm like, I can see the effort that went into this, but what a misfire this is.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  You can't look away. Yeah. That's tough. That's really funny.

• 11:38Andrew Manganelli?

  If 1 out of every 10 were the ones that were actually sticking, you guys had a pretty large team, right? Because I, for a YouTube channel, we're a fairly large team at 16, but I, if we had to only pick every video out of 10, we'd release one video every four months, probably. So what was it like working on a larger team? And how large was it?

• 11:58Speaker 00

  It wasn't that large. There were nine of us.

• 12:00Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, okay.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  At the sort of peak. I'd say that sort of for the most of our, our existence, there were between 6 and 7. And I think the way that we dealt with that is, if you look at the release schedule of the episodes over the course of the show, we went from, I think, 40 the first year, which was like, you know, you know, we were like a band putting out their first album. We'd been playing together forever. We had a bunch of, we had a bunch of stuff in the chamber, all these dream stories we'd wanted to do, that we got to do. And then, as time went on, our output slowed, to the point where like, our last couple of years, I think we were doing 25 or 20 and a, 20 a year? Not that many. Um, I, uh, I mean, yes, I would say that stories would take anywhere between, I would say

• 12:44Speaker 00

  the easiest one to do would be like, four to six weeks, would, with researching, interviewing, assembling, finishing the episode up. That's like, the, the slowest, or the fastest we can work. The slowest we can work.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  There is no limit to how slow.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  There's truly no limit to how, how long we can take. I think the longest episode probably took about 14 months.

• 13:06Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, wow.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  Of work.

• 13:08Andrew Manganelli?

  That's a long time. I, I guess, and we're such a idea, write, shoot, edit, post, like, almost all of the time. We are, we are extremely efficient, and that probably comes with, uh, you know, we're not doing investigative stuff. We don't need to talk to a lot of other people, generally. Um, so, I guess, like, how are you handling all of the organization of multiple projects? How many projects would you say were going on at a singular time?

• 13:36Speaker 00

  Many. I would say like, 6 or 7. I mean, that's still the case. And now I'm on a team with 2 other people. Like, it's much smaller. Um, but it's really like, the problem with doing an investigative reporting podcast, and doing narrative journalism, is if you're doing a narrative, it can't not have a payoff. It can't just come to a dead end. Um, so, we would get a lot of stories that were like halfway there, and then we didn't quite land, land the plane. And then we would just be like, all right, put this one on ice, we'll get back to it. Right now, we gotta, we gotta figure out something for 6 weeks from now.

• 14:14Andrew Manganelli?

  Another thing that was really impressive back there, wasn't just the stories, but then like, the episode formats you had. So you had like, yes, yes, no, super tech support. You even did annual things like email that forgiveness day. Were those just, at first, a way to tell a story, and then became continuous segments? Or were those pitched as segments from the start?

• 14:33Speaker 00

  Those were pitched as what we called furniture, which meant that we could just like, keep them in the room and move them around if we needed them. Um, the idea was to make things that weren't quite as intense of a project as sort of the standard story, but still had some kind of nourishment in them that people would like. And fortunately, like, yes, yes, no was like, such a blessing as a format for the listener, for the viewer. See, I'm, I'm very much in the audio realm here. For the viewer, uh, yes, yes, no was our boss, Alex Blumberg, who worked at This American Life. He is, I think, 10, maybe 15 years older than me. And just was sort of not at all interested in the internet. And so we would, we would, he would, he would like, go on Twitter every once in a while

• 15:17Speaker 00

  and send us a tweet and be like, this is absolutely inscrutable to me. It's like reading another language. What is this thing about? Like, what am I reading about? And so then we would have the opportunity to explain it to him.

• 15:29Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah. One of my favorite ones is when you brought Jason Manzoukis on to explain Harry Potter lore. That, I think that was still one of my favorite episodes.

• 15:36Speaker 00

  He, he's such a sweetheart, too. Such, such a nice dude, such a funny guy. Um, he was just on Taskmaster, that British show.

• 15:44Andrew Manganelli?

  What got us, me and my wife into Taskmaster, is knowing he was on it, hearing Hank Green talk about it, and now we're going back and watching Taskmaster.

• 15:50Speaker 00

  And I, I texted him to be like, hey, just so you know, you were so funny. And he was like, you won't believe this, but like, so much of that was done over the course of like, 3 hour days in like, a week. And I was like, you did that entire series in a week?

• 16:01Andrew Manganelli?

  That's wild.

• 16:02Speaker 00

  The fact that you could continue to perform like that is crazy.

• 16:06Andrew Manganelli?

  Did you find those furniture episodes to be more or less popular? Because I'm comparing them to kind of, what we do is, we have a weekly schedule, and then once a month, we do something called a bonus episode, which is just no rules, no regular, like, tech coverage. And it's just something we want to do that's fun, whether it's interviewing something, whether it's explaining something that happened in sports and tech terms. That almost feels kind of similar to that. Um, most of our audience hates those episodes, the sports ones. But I'm really interested, because I think so fondly of email tech support and yes, yes, no. And I'm wondering if they were as popular as the regular investigative episodes?

• 16:45Speaker 00

  I think, I think in some ways, yes, in some ways, they were actually more popular. They're definitely more sticky in people's brains. Because it was a lot of us arguing, you know? It was like, my boss being like, this is ridiculous. What is this world that you guys live in? And, you know, PJ, my co-host and I, constantly bickering about, about our perceptions on things. So like, in that way, they were very sticky. Some of the moments that people, when people come up to me and are like, hey, I remember that Reply All episode. It's like, there's one where I talked about how I sit in the shower. People talk to me about that all the time.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's a really good, I, I sometimes think about, like, how do you measure success as a creative? And one of those things is when people come up to me in public, and they'll, they'll say something, like, oh, I, I loved that one video that you did about that one thing. And I'll go, okay, yeah, that, I can tell that's having an impact on people. So it's, there's obviously on YouTube, view counts, and comment sections, and likes, and dislikes, and all that. But that's like, one of my favorite metrics to being like, that was a really good thing that we did. What is that like in podcasting? Because I, we have this podcast, but it's also a video podcast. Do you have other ways of measuring and being like, oh, you know what? That was a really, we should try that again. That was a great episode.

• 17:50Speaker 00

  Uh, no. The metrics, the way that you, that you measure podcasts, actually, or the sort of success or listener rate of podcasts, has actually gotten worse over time?

• 18:00Andrew Manganelli?

  It is. I don't know if it's always been like this, but trying to figure out audio podcast numbers feels like the devil.

• 18:06Speaker 00

  Well, there used to be, I think that company was called Pixel, don't quote me on this. There was a company that used to have a sort of tracking, the thing you could embed in your podcast, that was like, a tracking thing, that could give you an idea of like, when people were listening, what they were skipping, when they drop out. And then I, it was bought by a big company. I can't remember, it was Apple or Spotify or whomever.

• 18:28Andrew Manganelli?

  We've never heard that before.

• 18:30Speaker 00

  But it's no longer available, and no one has come in to fill that spot. So the best you get is like, Apple and Spotify, to some degree, will tell you how long people are listening. Um, but you're not, like, the data's not fantastic. It's really pretty bad.

• 18:46Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah. It's also tough to like, not that you always want to compare to other shows, but it's impossible to see how anyone else is doing. So, I mean, we a lot of times will be like, oh, new iPhone comes out, this is how our video did compared to other ones. And while sometimes comparison is not the best thing, the only way you can tell how you're doing versus something is the charts, which change every hour. So we'll be like, oh, we're number 25 in tech podcasts for today on, just on Apple. And then you refresh the page, and you're like, you're 30 now, and now Vergecast is above you. It, it feels like a mess.

• 19:20Speaker 00

  The other thing is that, like, again, 10 years ago, 70 to 80% of the audience was going through Apple podcasts, or what was iTunes at the time. And now, it's like, I think, we're like, 40%, my current show is 40% Apple. And then, it's like, there's a long tail of Spotify, Overcast, you know, all of them. So it's much, yeah.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So interesting. I, so you, Reply All was obviously an iconic show. You have the show now, Hyperfixed. What is the, I always like to give people like, one episode that I share to them that gets them hooked on the podcast, and then they can understand the rest of the pod from that. How do you describe Hyperfixed to people? And what's the episode that we should share with our listeners to get them hooked on it?

• 20:06Speaker 00

  Uh, how do I describe it? It's a show where listeners write in with problems, and I solve them. And sometimes those problems are just like, a question about the world. Uh, one that we're working on right now is, why does every microwave have a popcorn button, but all the bags say, don't use the popcorn button?

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 20:22Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm already very excited.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  I'm in. I'm in. That's a great question.

• 20:26Speaker 00

  Uh, I have a, uh, I have a, an interview with a podcast, or with a microwave manufacturer after we're done with this. And, but, and then other real questions, like, um, when I say real questions, I don't want to, I don't want to denigrate the popcorn.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  I want to know. That's an answer I want to know.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  You know, people who are having interpersonal problems, or with, with, with family and don't know how to navigate it. So we, we talked to experts and asked, try and figure it out. Um, people, you know, stuff like, there was a woman who, uh, used to buy a cake from a bakery every...

• 20:59Andrew Manganelli?

  That was such a good episode.

• 21:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, every, thank you. Every holiday, basically. And then, the bakery suddenly shut down, and she was like, I thought I was going to lose this cake forever. So we employed, um, Claire Saffitz, who is also a YouTuber, uh, to help us recreate the cake, based solely on their description of it, and pictures of it. Wow. And

• 21:24Andrew Manganelli?

  Great episode. I agree with him. See, I think something our audience would like, not to answer for you, but the, um, the story about a mouse that's also about everything.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  Oh, right.

• 21:32Andrew Manganelli?

  Like the, someone's Logitech mouse just stopped working one day. I think obviously we're a tech podcast. I think they would appreciate that and relate to it.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  We actually just learned that like a Logitech user created like a homebrew software that will keep the mouse from bricking if something goes wrong at Logitech. So we're gonna get David back in the studio and be like, hey, man, we've got an actual solution for you. We've got something that can really help.

• 21:57Andrew Manganelli?

  I love that. We need random people to find ways to make sure the thing you bought doesn't brick because the company messed it up.

• 22:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:05Andrew Manganelli?

  What were some of the, so now you're two-ish years into Hyperfix? Are you over two years now?

• 22:10Speaker 00

  We started, actually, our first two episodes came out in September.

• 22:14Andrew Manganelli?

  Those are the pilots and then those, you didn't launch till the following?

• 22:17Speaker 00

  November.

• 22:18Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay, yeah. What are some of the difficulties of launching after like a successful show like Reply All? Cause it was like a two-year gap in between as well?

• 22:27Speaker 00

  I, I think that the podcast industry is just totally different now. I mean, it's a situation where I got done with Reply All, which had, you know, a pretty successful run. We had about a million listeners at our peak and I was just like, well, I'm gonna do whatever I want. Like, I'm gonna make the weirdest possible thing I can. And I started going around and pitching stuff to people. And they were all like, oh, that sounds really cool. Can you do two episodes a week? Can you do, and I was like, I was like, do you?

• 22:53Andrew Manganelli?

  Know what that entails?

• 22:54Speaker 00

  And I was like, yeah, if you give me like, if you give me like a staff of 15 or 20, I can. And then, uh, I, I feel like I had all of these things that were really close to deals.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  Barack Obama's podcast company, Higher Ground, was like really interested for a while and then just vanished. I don't know what the deal is. He got busy with other stuff.

• 23:26Speaker 00

  But, uh, the thing that made me really realize like, oh, I am in a different world than the one that I, that I was in previously is I got pitched by a production company. They're like, we wanna do a podcast about fandoms. And I was like, that sounds really similar to sort of where I live and I would love, that sounds really interesting. So we did a couple pilot episodes and they're like, we're gonna shop this around. We'll get back to you. And then they got back to me and they were like, hey, listen, we haven't had anybody pick it up. We still believe in it. We wanna produce it ourselves. We'll give you $250 an episode. And I was like, I was like, I need to, I need to, I have to live. I have to feed my kids. So eventually I was just like, well, I'm gonna go into business for myself.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  And, I mean, it's different in terms of there being more podcasts now, but it's also different in terms of like ad rates and the, just like the saturation of podcasts in the world, making it harder for us to get a foothold, you know?

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I get asked a lot as a YouTuber of, I don't know, 12, 13 years, or whatever it is, if you were starting over today in the current world of YouTube, how would you do it? And I've never been able to really have a very good answer because I know what it's like to start in 2009, very intimately. I know all about starting in 2009, but today it's all about like taking advantage of the position that we're in now. And I don't really have a good answer for that. Does it feel the same in podcasts? Like, it's such a different landscape that it's almost a completely different problem starting today versus starting 10 years ago?

• 24:59Speaker 00

  Certainly, because I went, I was like, okay, I'll just run the same playbook that I did 10 years ago. And I was like, I'll get on 99% invisible with a story and I did. And it didn't have the same, like, I didn't get the same number of people over. I mean, you guys also have to deal with like, the thing that I don't have to deal with, that you have to deal with, right? It's like algorithm changes and like, how does that affect the way that you are, you're making content?

• 25:24Andrew Manganelli?

  We just went through a fun one of YouTube decided they're really scared of TikTok and Instagram and drastically changed. So now a view counts when one frame of your video is played, but that only counts to the public facing view, not the engaged views that we have, which are the things that mean someone actually watched it and how we make money off of it. So now it, it's just like, that essentially broke the, we have this like rating system where every time you put out a video, it scales it against the last 10 videos you sent and rates it as a one, one out of 10, one to 10 out of 10. That whole thing just broke within the last week because they put it out. A very important metric thing we use to tell how a video is doing compared to previous videos.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  It's called a viewflation.

• 26:06Andrew Manganelli?

  We're more about viewflation. So, I mean, hey, this, this bonus episode's gonna look sick because it's gonna have a bunch of views.

• 26:14Andrew Manganelli?

  But that's just one thing. YouTube constantly is just, hey, we changed this, but we really, to their credit, a little bit, they don't want to tell you exactly how the algorithm works because there are people out there who are gonna game it as hard as possible and that's gonna lead to poorer quality videos. People not staying on. We all know YouTube wants you to be on the site as long as possible.

• 26:36Speaker 00

  I feel like there's always sort of a, like a tide that rises and recedes of people who have like figured out how to game it and put out the worst quality content.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  It's kinda like whack a mole. Like, there are always bad actors who are trying to, they'll call it optimized, but really they're trying to like spam the thing that gets them to the top and, and gets them the most views. And so as soon as that tide has receded, there's some change that YouTube makes. And then they find what that new thing is and they spam that again. So it does very much feel like a whack a mole game.

• 27:08Andrew Manganelli?

  And we like to, we like to pay attention to the things that will obviously help get a new audience and like broaden our, but we'll never sacrifice quality over that. We'll never sacrifice what we feel like our videos are helping people with.

• 27:20Speaker 00

  I'm so obstinate about that. Like, I, like, you know, I work with Radiotopia who distributes my show. They sell my ads, but that's basically sort of our relationship is like, they sell my ads, they help me with promotion, they distribute the show. And, um, they're always like, well, you should really be, you know, following stuff in the news. And I'm like, actually, I don't wanna do that. I wanna do whatever I wanna, and I'm like, there's stuff in the news that interests the hell out of me that I would love to do stories about on, but I'm so stubborn. But I'm just like, I wanna do it the way that, I wanna do it with no one else's, uh, so I'm probably shooting myself in the foot a little bit.

• 27:54Andrew Manganelli?

  Maybe a little, but I mean, that means you're also getting these extremely unique stories like the microwave popcorn bag. But we, uh, we work with Vox and similarly you.

• 28:05Speaker 00

  Same relationship.

• 28:06Andrew Manganelli?

  We, they basically just sell our ads. They have nothing to do with any of the, in fact, most of the time they're like, hey, we have some other people who are working on stuff. Can we get some advice for you on the YouTube side? Cause we have, know nothing about it. So we're lucky enough that Vox doesn't ask us to really do anything. They help us promote. They'll get us a live event every once in a while. But at the same time, they're constantly, they're more like, what are you guys doing over there? That might be able to help. Have you ever heard of this? And we're like, yeah, we do that. Do you wanna do this? And we're like, no, we have zero interest. I feel bad. They pitch us ads all the time and we're just like, no. Oh, why not? I don't like that.

• 28:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:43Andrew Manganelli?

  And they seem kinda surprised sometimes, but I give them credit.

• 28:46Speaker 00

  I have to say no to, I mean, I'm, I'm just like, I'm not gonna take any gambling ads.

• 28:51Andrew Manganelli?

  We're strict, yeah.

• 28:52Speaker 00

  There are certain companies that I just feel like, I don't like what this company does or their reputation. I don't wanna work with them. Stamps.com is a non-starter.

• 29:03Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, really?

• 29:05Speaker 00

  Mostly just because, um, I didn't like working with them at Reply All.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  That's valid.

• 29:10Speaker 00

  We used to do stuff at Reply All and like, the only, the only thing that makes ads worth it for me is like trying to make them as much my personality and to that end, kind of like, it's kinda like I gotta put my finger in the eye of the sponsor a little bit.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  I do have maybe a more controversial question.

• 29:37Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  But it is along kind of the same lines of like the pressure of the, the algorithm and then the formats of the day today versus the past. Video is, is a huge format and there are video podcasts. And I think it was, it was maybe last year where YouTube was going around telling everyone that YouTube is the number one platform for podcasts in the world now.

• 29:57Speaker 00

  I got that. I got those emails.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  A bunch of those emails. And I'm curious about the decision to continue with an audio only podcast, knowing all that you know about the challenges of that and then the huge wide world that is, you know, the recommendation algorithm and the explore page that is a video podcast. I'm so curious.

• 30:15Speaker 00

  I mean, part of it is just, I'm a bit of a dinosaur. Like, I'm, I'm not, I don't have any video editing skills and I don't have anybody on staff who's really very good at it. I can, I can edit a video. It just takes me probably four times as long as anybody who has any competence in it.

• 30:33Speaker 00

  It's more the fact that we do this show that we write, we write a narrative, we do these interviews. And the way I actually record it is like, we're still writing while we're recording. We'll be sitting there writing and I'll read a sentence and be like, that doesn't sound right. We'll stop, I'll write something new, I'll read the sentence again. I also just like, I'm like a very halting speaker in reality when I'm not reading from a script. So it's really hard to actually adjust to this new landscape and it would require so much more work from us. And like even the way that we edit audio, it's like, we try and make a show that's like extremely concise.

• 31:14Speaker 00

  It's so the guests get, the guests' point gets across a lot very easily. So there's a lot of cutting out of ums, there's a like, we'll cut in midway through a sentence in order to get sort of the meat of the conversation there.

• 31:28Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  It doesn't translate well to video. And, and so we, we talk about, we still talk, we talk about it all the time. There's been a lot of discussion of how to make the show more visually oriented. My, uh, my, my editor, when I was, when I was coming over here was like, ask them what, what cameras they use. And I was like, I bet.

• 31:50Andrew Manganelli?

  We're the worst.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Well, that's, it's a funny question because I do think, so we get asked all the time about the equipment that we use. And I almost always say that like, that does not matter. Like you can use a half the camera that we use and it'll be fine. But I guess my hot take is I, I watch a lot of YouTube channels and I use the word watch lightly because they'll make like 45 minute, 60 minute videos that feel to me like an adaptation of the old podcast format. Where you can see that there's a lot of B-roll over a lot of cutting up of sentences to form like just the perfect thing. And obviously it is a lot more work, but I, I see those do really, really well. There's also a lot more chatter about how maybe they won't be doing so well in the future. But it is, it is a curious thing. I do see a lot of those on YouTube have a lot of success.

• 32:36Speaker 00

  The temptation is always there and we're like constantly fighting the temptation to, to like try, make a big push to video. Because again, it's just like, podcasts are really neutral. The platforms may have some kind of agenda that brings stuff to the front, but like really like podcasts are not that much different than they were 25 years ago.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 32:58Speaker 00

  It's like, you just search for the thing you want and you subscribe to it and you get it whenever they put it out. It's not, there's not an algorithm, there's not anybody pushing it.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And YouTube, every time I talk to them about this, cause I get mad whenever they take a little of that away from us. YouTube felt like it used to be a lot like that. You would subscribe to a channel and then you'd go to your subscription box and watch the new videos from the people you subscribe to. And it was that simple. And the more they change it, the more they'll go, okay, yeah, everyone's looking at algorithmically based recommendations now. So we're going to switch it to the homepage and you'll probably see who you're subscribed to on your homepage, but also maybe not.

• 33:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  And then it just, yeah, it's more and more, uh, it's going further and further away from that. So I totally feel you.

• 33:41Speaker 00

  Are you familiar with the concept of in sh-tification?

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 33:44Andrew Manganelli?

  It probably gets mentioned like four times.

• 33:48Speaker 00

  So yeah, I mean, that's what's happening. They're like, just, their goal is not to serve you what you want. Their goal is to like, make you stay on the page for as long as possible.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:57Speaker 00

  Which is why I feel like Instagram is basically useless now. I get like one, one out of every 10 things in my feed is a person that I know.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. I do feel like to an extent, a lot of it has been an overreaction to TikTok. And maybe I'm just spewing my thoughts now, but I think TikTok came along and they were so unique in that they just recommend you stuff. And you could follow whatever, but you're really just here for the feed of like, whatever we recommend you. And YouTube, you know, their, their numbers will probably say that they're doing better now, but I feel like they overreacted and tried to overcorrect and compete with TikTok. And so now there's shorts and now there's a ton of recommended content. And reels does the same thing. And so they all kind of, the other word we've used is like carsonization, which is this super old theory that the crab essentially, is it the crab?

• 34:46Andrew Manganelli?

  Lobster?

• 34:46Speaker 01

  It's the crab. The crab is like the perfect form of a map, of a, of an animal under the sea.

• 34:52Andrew Manganelli?

  Of a crustacean.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Of a crustacean. And that all evolution of crustaceans goes in the direction of turning into a crab. And so TikTok is a crab and people like TikTok. And so now all social media is turning into TikTok and that's a bummer.

• 35:08Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah, we, I think in the terms of, one of the reasons we ask about video podcasting and it's just like you said, podcasting hasn't changed much. Discoverability for podcasting is awful and.

• 35:20Speaker 00

  And always has been and has not changed either.

• 35:22Andrew Manganelli?

  Exactly. Except for there's 400 times as many podcasts as SIF there now. So, so we obviously were video people. When we started the podcast, it was just Marquez and I. And we said, we're used to showing people stuff. We need to learn how to talk to people in audio. So we did our first 60 episodes audio only just to, we always knew we were going to go to video. We just wanted to get the feel for it and try and learn from it. And we eventually went to, to video. It was interesting because I think our audio downloads were way higher for a while. Then video started taking off a little more hitting recommendations. It, it became discoverable. So that's why we usually ask people who do podcasts, why no video?

• 36:02Andrew Manganelli?

  Or have you seen success in video? Just because YouTube's the second largest search engine at this point.

• 36:08Speaker 00

  I mean, I record everything and the most of our, 90% of our interviews are, 99% of our interviews are on Riverside. I don't know if you've been familiar with it.

• 36:16Andrew Manganelli?

  That's what we use.

• 36:17Speaker 00

  And so we do have a video component. And so we do occasionally put those up on Instagram and stuff and they, we've had a couple, two or three pop off like big.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:28Speaker 00

  But that does not translate to increased listens to the show.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Totally true.

• 36:34Speaker 00

  I think that the new meta of the internet is you need to be monetizing your reels and, and shorts and TikToks because that, those people are not going to make their way back to your show.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:51Andrew Manganelli?

  Where, yeah, it's, that is a very, I like to say the, um, you get the big funnel of short, short form vertical content and it's all pouring into there. You get so much, but then at the bottom of that funnel is another funnel upside down and then just spewing it everywhere. Like it does not connect. One million views on a TikTok is like five views, it feels like sometimes. And we, a benefit of us actually is we do do, we do shorts every once in a while, but we're lucky enough that people will just create short content out of our stuff.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  That's cool.

• 37:25Andrew Manganelli?

  Themselves. We let people do that as long as we've asked to not, uh, in sh-tify it as much as possible. Cause people love to just put AI slop all over and their own watermarks and stuff. We asked them not to do that, but that is our, really throw it out there and maybe we're hoping a little tiny bit. I guess it's less of, does a direct link come back to the podcast? Or did you see my stupid face in your feed enough times that when my face comes up or Marquez's face comes up on YouTube, you're like, I've seen that guy so many times before, maybe I should click this. And there's no direct way to, to tell if that's actually, yeah.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:00Andrew Manganelli?

  That's, that's kind of our thought on that. And obviously, you know, we're talking to you about video podcasts. We obviously don't know your full workflow and everything. I know it's, it's tough. We try and cut out ums as such a lot. I say it all the time. But when you have two different angles, it's a lot easier to just different angle, different angle, hide all of those cuts. Versus you're doing almost everything remote.

• 38:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my, so I've got three producers, two full-time, one part-time and an engineer. And that's basically our entire team. And my engineer's in Seattle, two of my producers are in LA and one of them's in Tucson. So like, we're never together.

• 38:34Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay. Not even the same coast.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. I have, I have a producer who I've never met in person. We're just fully remote and, and like, you know, we're doing a live show next week. So the producers are coming out. This will be the like second time I've seen them in person in the two years we've been making the show.

• 38:54Speaker 00

  And in some ways that's really great, but in other ways it like makes the idea of coordinating, again, a video podcast, especially the fact that I have like an eight foot by eight foot room in my basement where I record everything. Much more difficult. So.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 39:11Andrew Manganelli?

  If I could go back to Hyperfix a little bit, along with growing, one thing, because you are now independent with Radiotopia is you're, you have a premium subscriber base and you're working on growing that. I've been one from the start, not to brag, but.

• 39:23Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 39:25Andrew Manganelli?

  There's a lot of fun thing. We don't do a lot of premium stuff here or like content behind payroll. We're obviously lucky and fortunate enough to have a fairly self-supporting, uh, audience. And what has been the struggles or funness or about growing premium subscribers? And like what you're offering in terms of extra content or?

• 39:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. So we're offering, I mean, our offer is like, you get a two bonus episodes a month, discounts on merch, discounts on live shows, so on and so forth.

• 39:59Andrew Manganelli?

  The Discord server also.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  The Discord server, which I, to me is the most fun part. I, I'm not the biggest participant, like I show up, but, but I just think that it's like a really nice community of people are great there. My, the mods there are really sweet. They're all coming out to the show, uh, which is really cool. And I feel very fortunate for that. That stuff has been really fun, just getting to meet those people and like, just, you know, the ease of interaction, people being able to ask questions about the show that I can easily answer. And, you know, I feel like my listener base is around 100,000

• 40:40Speaker 00

  plus an episode. We are lucky enough that, you know, if someone has a problem and they're a premium member, they can just send me a message on Discord and I can be like, oh, let me figure it out. It's pretty painless. The struggle is, in order to do that, you have to be relentless and shameless about your self-promotion. And I have a lot of shame in my life.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  It's hard, doesn't it?

• 41:07Speaker 00

  It's really hard. It's so hard to just, over and over again, just be like, yeah, you know, you guys really gotta sign up for this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, I don't love that part of it.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 41:21Speaker 00

  But, and also, just like, if you're not constantly on message, you don't grow. You know, I did a thing, I did a thing in, I think, May, where I was like, hey, we're really trying to get 250 new subscribers this month. And I was really relentless for that month. And I pulled it off. And then, since then, so June, July, August, it's now September. So, in the past three months, I've gotten 150 new subscribers. So, it's like, really, really vanishingly small. And it's just constant, constant messaging.

• 41:54Andrew Manganelli?

  We even have a hard time asking people to subscribe at the start of every episode. Adam is relentless about, he puts it into our document and we still manage to skip it.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  It mysteriously gets ignored every week.

• 42:05Andrew Manganelli?

  I mean, we definitely didn't say it this, this episode.

• 42:07Speaker 00

  But now's your chance.

• 42:08Andrew Manganelli?

  Please subscribe, yeah.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Hey, get subscribed.

• 42:11Andrew Manganelli?

  To us and to Alex, it's, one of my favorite things, I just, on Discord for years, I don't get to get into it as much as I want, but there was a bonus episode about a woman who played this game when she was in like, preschool or kindergarten. And you released the bonus episode as unfinished, kind of as a, like, a cry for help of, if anyone has ever seen this game, this is how far we are. And I immediately was like, I know they're talking about this on Discord. And I was searching, searching, searching. And I was like, I bet I'm too late already. And the thread was like, 300 comments long. And of course, they found it at the end. And that's the kind of stuff, I don't know where we would do

• 42:51Andrew Manganelli?

  that on our side, but stuff like that is like, people like criminal podcasts because they like feeling like they're solving a mystery with it. And that felt like a term there where I was actually talking with people who were solving it. And then you got to release the episode.

• 43:07Speaker 00

  There are a lot of people on our Discord who are especially experts in like, IT and open source intelligence and stuff like that, who like, when we have a problem, my impulse is to go to them.

• 43:20Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 43:21Speaker 00

  I was working on a story about a hacker in Germany who took over like, a white supremacist dating website. And she gave a talk at a hacker conference in, in Germany. And it was in German and the English subtitles were not hitting. They were not doing great for me. They were okay, but there were some where like, I didn't really understand them. So, I just had this, I just had a guy who was on the, who was on the server, on the Discord. And I was just like, hey, man, can you help me a little bit with this? And so, I had like, a German translator.

• 43:59Andrew Manganelli?

  That's awesome.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  He is thanked in the credits.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  That's really perfect.

• 44:03Andrew Manganelli?

  How many problem submissions are you getting? If you want to do a total, or if you think, how many a month?

• 44:10Speaker 00

  I think we've got about 3,000 right now, from, for the two years that we've been doing it. And, you know, you have to keep in mind, some of those are people just being like, you know, I don't know how to log into your website, or I thought your episode was dumb, or whatever. But, I mean, there's a significant number. People have little curiosities that they just sit with. And I'm sure this is with you too, and it's with me, where I'm just like, a good example is, the town that I live in, they insist on not letting us put both paper recycling and bottle recycling in the same, on the same week. It's every other week. And it's like, now then I have like, tons of bottles just hanging out in

• 44:54Speaker 00

  my house. And I'm like, this is so dumb. Why do they do this? And when I was pitching Hyperfixed, I was like, this is the problem I want to find out the answer to. Why are they doing this to me?

• 45:03Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah. Yeah. You can say no to this. But we pretend, I've been thinking since you launched the podcast, we need to have a team problem here that you can fix.

• 45:12Speaker 00

  Oh, I would love to.

• 45:13Andrew Manganelli?

  And I've had such a hard time thinking of it. Until recently, I realized the problem that we have every single week.

• 45:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:19Andrew Manganelli?

  So, I'm gonna pitch this to you. You can say no. You can look into it if you'd like. Or you can even just go through the process of how you decide if this is a good problem or not, and tell us no right now. But, do you know how chapters work on YouTube?

• 45:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 45:32Andrew Manganelli?

  Or do you know what chapters are? On Waveform, our chapters break every single week, without fail. It's gotten to the point where, as a meme, our whole audience has to comment, chapters are working within the first hour, just to make sure we don't go crazy, because then they will break, and then they will come back magically.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  And they will break in a slightly different way, almost every time.

• 45:54Andrew Manganelli?

  So, two weeks ago, they went away, and then they came back. All the correct timestamps, except all of the chapter titles were from the previous week's episode.

• 46:03Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 46:04Andrew Manganelli?

  So, we were doing, there was like, a story about the new Samsung leak, and it was titled, like, Quince Sponsored, because it was like, the ad spot from the previous week. We've talked to, both of us have emailed people at YouTube. The problem is, is we kind of fix it fast enough that by the, because, we're not gonna wait around, we want the chapters to work.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:26Andrew Manganelli?

  They make sense in podcasts.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  I've spoken directly to engineers who work for YouTube at a YouTube event, frustrated about, first of all, the way that you input chapters on YouTube in the first place is kind of silly. You have to put the timestamps in the description and write it all out manually, and then it hopefully auto detects and populates at the bottom of the video. That, I think, is silly. But I talked to them about it. I was like, it doesn't break on the MKBHD channel. It doesn't break when we add it on other channels. But it does break on the podcast, for some reason, after some amount of time. So, that's been weighing on us.

• 46:56Andrew Manganelli?

  Our problem is, one, why do they break every week?

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:01Andrew Manganelli?

  And two, why does a company as large as YouTube think the best way to input different chapters is to just, in the description, write the word "chapters," and then put in like, 00:00 start of podcast?

• 47:17Speaker 00

  It doesn't make any sense.

• 47:18Andrew Manganelli?

  And that's how you do a chapter. So, just throwing it out there.

• 47:22Speaker 00

  So, here's what I'll say about this. Tech companies are the least likely to ever respond to our emails. We actually had two active Google-related investigations. And I know somebody who works at Google in their press office. And I was like, I got an in. It's cool. And this is in the last six months. This isn't like, over the course of, this is recently. We have contacted them about both. One of them, they actually fixed.

• 47:54Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay.

• 47:56Speaker 00

  But, they won't talk to us. They refuse to talk to us. I worked on a tech show for a decade. I worked on Reply All for a decade. We got YouTube on the record once, Google never on the record. And our company was bought by Spotify in like, 2020. And Spotify wouldn't even come on our show. And it was really embarrassing to be at a, to be on a show that was owned by Spotify and have to say, more than once, yeah, they declined to comment for this.

• 48:24Andrew Manganelli?

  That's wild.

• 48:25Speaker 00

  So, I would, this is, to me, is super interesting, because I feel like the technical answer would be fascinating to me. But, the likelihood is zero.

• 48:36Andrew Manganelli?

  That's totally fair.

• 48:37Speaker 00

  I will send the email.

• 48:39Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay. Or even if it's, if someone does respond to you, and it's not enough for a story, we'll just be like, chapters work now because of Alex Goldman.

• 48:47Speaker 00

  That would be, that would be wonderful. You're gonna have to do that, there's gonna have to be like, a sponsored Alex Goldman chapter segment.

• 48:53Andrew Manganelli?

  We'll put one in, yeah. I just want a UI to add them. I feel like that's not hard. They have a fantastic UI for wherever you want to put mid-rolls in any video. I feel like it's the same thing.

• 49:04Speaker 00

  It seems like it should be really easy.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, just right underneath there.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  All right, so I have, we have a little segment that I'm very excited about. I just want to show you some interesting tech products and get your reaction.

• 49:23Andrew Manganelli?

  That we've either covered or have talked about.

• 49:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:26Andrew Manganelli?

  Or maybe you haven't seen yet.

• 49:28Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  They're all, they all have appeared on this channel in some form and for some different reason. And just for a little background, I, you're talking about like one out of every 10 stories actually makes sense. I did a video where I decided to say yes to every email requesting a product review for an entire month. Because most of the stuff that I get asked to review, I just, I read the email and I go, hmm. A small camera robot on wheels, I'm not going to do that. And then another random thing, I'm not going to do that. But then one out of every 100, like, yeah, okay, I'll review that. And then I did this thing for the month and I got a whole bunch of stuff that was predictably dumb. But then a bunch of stuff that was actually kind of interesting and I'm glad I said yes to.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  So we get exposure to things that are unexpectedly cool and interesting sometimes.

• 50:16Andrew Manganelli?

  And some that are really dumb.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  And some that are also really dumb. First item I'm going to show to you in person instead of on the screen.

• 50:22Andrew Manganelli?

  We have a video too on the screen.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  It is this, and I'm just going to tell you that this is called the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold. It's a tri-fold smartphone.

• 50:32Speaker 00

  Okay, I mean, why not just get a tablet?

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Well, the thing about tablets is you can't fit them in your pocket.

• 50:38Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  But you do have one device that is a phone sometimes, and then you also have a tablet sometimes.

• 50:43Speaker 00

  I have wondered, I've never held one of these folding, folding smartphones before.

• 50:47Andrew Manganelli?

  Your first one's the big dog of it.

• 50:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:50Andrew Manganelli?

  The one that's already been discontinued.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  It's been discontinued already. Why was it discontinued?

• 50:55Andrew Manganelli?

  Want to guess the price?

• 50:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. Oh, I'm wondering. Now it's buzzing.

• 51:00Andrew Manganelli?

  Because, so you're folding it the wrong way.

• 51:02Speaker 00

  Oh!

• 51:03Andrew Manganelli?

  Which it won't break, it just will be.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  It'll just buzz.

• 51:06Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm glad that happened.

• 51:08Speaker 00

  My guess for the price, $8.99.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  So a normal slab phone is roughly $8.99. And so what you'll notice is a lot of these folds will be roughly two times the price of a regular phone.

• 51:19Speaker 00

  Two times.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  But this one folds twice.

• 51:23Speaker 00

  So is it three times the price?

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Three times the price.

• 51:25Speaker 00

  So it's like a $2,400 phone?

• 51:27Speaker 01

  It's about $2,900.

• 51:29Speaker 00

  Okay, that's bad. I can see why it was discontinued.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  You can't fit a tablet in your pocket any other way.

• 51:35Speaker 00

  That's a good point. I have two arms for like, and backpacks, all kinds of stuff that will allow me to take the thing. And, and, and this is smaller than a tablet and a tablet's like $3.99. So I feel like I'm, I'm good on this. Like, I understand the impulse, but unless they can get it for cheaper than that, I don't understand how it makes economic sense. And obviously it didn't because they discontinued it.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  It's going to be so interesting because you may or may not know, next week is Apple's big iPhone event as of when we record this. And we all expect them to release their first foldable iPhone ever. And Apple has a habit of like introducing the rest of the world to form factors that have already existed. But a lot of people are going to say the same thing, well, I'll just get a phone and an iPad. But this folding iPhone is going to be a phone and an iPad and the cost of both. But you can fit it in your pocket and I think it's going to be really interesting to see the public reaction to it.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, that is going to be interesting because they are kind of trailing these days.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, and a lot of stuff. This is one, it's been like eight years of folding phones. This is the first triple, like Samsung has a Z Fold 8 already. They're well into it.

• 52:39Speaker 00

  I feel like the first couple came out and people were like, the screens break too easily.

• 52:43Andrew Manganelli?

  We broke it. We broke the first one.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  That is, it's really funny you said that because that was a whole, like, I love hearing how these stories get distilled by like the headlines or whatever was happening at the time. The first ever Galaxy Z Fold comes out, they send review units to people. And I open my review unit and it looks like it's crazy, you know, folding screen, that's really interesting. It looks like it has a screen protector on it. So just after I finished recording my unboxing video, I went to peel off, which lots of phones have screen protectors on them. I peeled it off and halfway through the peel, the screen goes black and I go, oh, that, that was not as convenient.

• 53:24Andrew Manganelli?

  That turned into a 15 million view unboxing video followed by a 15 million view, we just broke the state of the art folding phone.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  Samsung immediately recalled it and several other reviewers had also broken theirs the same way. They recalled all of them and they took several months to re-engineer the phone to then put it out later and hopefully not break. And I love that that gets distilled to like, I heard those broke a lot. It's like, yes, they definitely did. But, you know, now eight years later, they're thinner, lighter, you know, they're really, really competent, but they are still expensive.

• 53:57Speaker 00

  There's certainly like stuff that I, like technology that I like where I'm like very particular about it, usually like musical equipment and stuff. But when it comes to like cars and phones, I'm just like, whatever is truly the cheapest and most convenient for me is where I'm at.

• 54:12Andrew Manganelli?

  I promise you, none of these five aren't any of those things.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  It's gonna be good.

• 54:16Speaker 00

  All right, well, I'm going to love all of them.

• 54:18Andrew Manganelli?

  All right.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  All right, product number two. This is called the Benny Robot. The Benny Robot is a small camera robot, his face as you can see, has a camera on it. It's controlled by an app, but it's also got smart tracking. It has a 4K 30 FPS sensor on its nose. And for some reason, it's also super agile and can jump and do flips.

• 54:42Speaker 00

  What?

• 54:43Speaker 01

  And land and keep going. And I was shocked at how good it is. Okay, except for that, that one time where it flipped its battery out its back. But it jumps into things, bounces off of them, recovers really quickly. The gyroscopes, the balance ability is shockingly good and it can go up to 18 miles an hour.

• 55:02Speaker 00

  It seems really cool. I am struggling to figure out the use case for this.

• 55:08Andrew Manganelli?

  Every single comment in the video, this was another, a different say yes to everything, but it's like, everything about that is cool. 500 bucks is not a wild price for that, I don't think. It was, I mean, it would just slam into things and just get right back up and keep running. And again, there's not a single person other than like, I like to have the like low skateboard angle of like 90s Thrasher videos.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like following you at ankle height.

• 55:36Speaker 00

  I mean, you could, you could do that with a drone and you could also get much more majestic, majestic shots with a drone. I can't, I like truly can't figure out what I would use it for. Aside from like entertaining my kids, because they would love it.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  100%. Also, pet footage. Small, small niche, but your pet's only this tall and the robot's only this tall and now it's eye level, now it's great footage.

• 56:02Andrew Manganelli?

  It was, when we first got it, we got it early enough because it's a Kickstarter right now, that there is no information on how to turn it on. I don't know why they didn't send that part to us and there's no manual. And we got it to turn on, but apparently not in the correct configuration. So it's one leg didn't set up properly and just was dragging behind it. But it still wanted to go full, it goes 18 miles an hour, full speed forward. And it kind of just around the office feels like, you know, when you introduce a cat to like a new house? And they kind of skirt across the outsides of the wall really fast? It was just doing that around the office and we couldn't figure out how to stop it. It was like the best 45 minutes of this year, I think, watching that thing.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, shout out to the Benny Robot.

• 56:44Andrew Manganelli?

  I just want to say Andrew had a child this year and he still said that.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  Best moment of the year, Benny Robot.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Confirmed. All right.

• 56:53Speaker 00

  Yikes.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  Next.

• 56:55Andrew Manganelli?

  Sorry, Owen.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Next item is a collab product by Nike and Hyperice. Hyperice is a sports recovery company, so everything they make is geared towards recovery. They collabed to make a wearable pair of heated and massaging shoes.

• 57:10Andrew Manganelli?

  And they come out, these are shoes with compression that can help you warm up and recover while standing, walking, sitting, or traveling. So they are expecting you to potentially wear these out in public so that you can massage and compress your tendonitis or whatever. As you're going outside.

• 57:33Speaker 00

  I'm trying to figure out what to say about these. I thought that they were going to have power laces like the Back to the Future 2 shoes.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  They kind of look like they should.

• 57:39Speaker 00

  If, if they did, I'm on board.

• 57:41Andrew Manganelli?

  You're in.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Nike did make those, by the way.

• 57:44Speaker 00

  They made them the prop for the movie or?

• 57:46Speaker 01

  Nike did, they started with the prop for the movie and made them self-lacing and then shrunk them down into like a regular looking pair of shoes called the Hyperapt.

• 57:54Andrew Manganelli?

  And they have the, the Back to the Future ones for sale at one point, extremely limited quality, quantity. I think you got to try them.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they'd look like moon boots like this, but they had like a button and a battery and like wires through the top and you'd press it and they'd, and you kind of like the movie.

• 58:09Speaker 00

  One of my great regrets is that I did not know, I would say it was probably eight years ago now. Reebok issued what they called bug stompers, which were the shoes that Ripley wears in Aliens. And they looked so good, but now they're all like $500 and I'm not going to go do that. Those like, they have the form of those Astro Boy boots that everybody's wearing. So like, I feel like I couldn't in good conscience wear them. I feel like I am not stylish enough.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  Fair.

• 58:39Speaker 00

  To do that, I couldn't pull it off.

• 58:41Andrew Manganelli?

  Is for these?

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:42Speaker 00

  I don't, I feel like, yeah, I think you're right, actually. I feel like I would be super self-conscious wearing shoes that kind of look like air conditioners, like they're a little crazy. Also, I, maybe it's just because I don't have particular foot problems, but I just can't imagine wanting to have my feet massaged while I'm walking around.

• 59:01Andrew Manganelli?

  That's the, I, I think it's a noble, people have feet problems and like sitting on your couch and having something for that. I just don't know why you need to travel with them. Imagine going through TSA with these things.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  I'll play Dell's advocate for a second. As an athlete, I, I use this product by Hyperice a lot that is just like a full leg length compression boot, right? So you put them on and they're the length of both your legs and they like sort of move the blood up and down your leg after you've done a workout for recovery. But you can't go anywhere while you're wearing them because you're wearing balloons on your legs, basically. And so I might want like a glass of water or something from across the room or the TV remote is eight feet away and I, I'm just, I'm immobile. I literally can't go over there. And so when I saw this come out, my first thought was legitimately like, I think I might prefer this because I can at least walk across the room. I'm not going to go somewhere wearing them, but I can walk across the room.

• 59:55Speaker 00

  I think that there's a thing, like we've invented.

• 1:00:00Speaker 00

  A lot of amazing, incredible things that have made life easier. But now there's this idea that we need to combine them so you can do them on the go. Like, you know, a self-heating mug and stuff like that. And I understand that to a point, and I think this crosses my threshold for practicality.

• 1:00:15Andrew Manganelli?

  This is the line?

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:16Speaker 03

  That's totally valid.

• 1:00:17Andrew Manganelli?

  The next one, I know you're an audio fan, so I think you will particularly like these. Do you wanna?

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  These are the Dyson headphones.

• 1:00:27Andrew Manganelli?

  I think they're called the Zones.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  So you can see the headphone part, but they have this attachable.

• 1:00:32Speaker 00

  What?

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  Air.

• 1:00:33Speaker 00

  Look like Master Chief.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, air purifier. So it attaches inside the ears of the headphones. There are fans and air filters that is intaking air and then blowing cold air across your nose and mouth so that you can breathe clean air while it's dirty outside. And they do look quite odd.

• 1:00:52Andrew Manganelli?

  These were very clearly developed in the COVID era.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:55Andrew Manganelli?

  But got released far after. And the more we use them, the more we realize it probably would actually spread germs more than protect you from germs because it literally, the front of that mask has an vent on the top and bottom, which is just blowing air. So if you were to sneeze, now your sneeze gets an extra little boost from said fan out into the ether.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't quite get it.

• 1:01:23Speaker 00

  To me, it feels like, you know, there are things that, I'm sure that normal headphones look bizarre when people first started wearing them and everybody got used to them. So like, it's not about how it looks so much, but like, what, again, what's the use case? The only thing I can think of is the two days out of the year in New Jersey where we're getting fires from Canada.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  True.

• 1:01:45Andrew Manganelli?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:46Speaker 00

  And then, and you can't, and you can't go outside.

• 1:01:49Andrew Manganelli?

  That's supposed to, yeah.

• 1:01:50Speaker 00

  Which we've had, you know, this year and a couple of years ago as well. Unfortunately, it feels like it's becoming, this to me feels like a dystopia device. Like, if we were living in Blade Runner times, I would buy the shit out of that.

• 1:02:04Andrew Manganelli?

  If you want to know how well they're doing, their second set did not have the mask up.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:08Andrew Manganelli?

  They just really support regular headphones.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  Originally for a thousand dollars and then they were discontinued as well. They were, the tagline did say world's first wearable air purifier, which if you're a Dyson employee is maybe intriguing, but then that was the product they made. So, yeah, not the best thing they've ever done.

• 1:02:26Andrew Manganelli?

  This last one, I don't know if we should read the description and then show you the video or show you the video and then the description. This is not something we've got to use. This came out recently. But it's the hardest I've laughed, I think, on the podcast in forever.

• 1:02:39Speaker 00

  I can't wait.

• 1:02:39Andrew Manganelli?

  Do you want to read the description or you want me to just play?

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  Um, let me read the entire description and then we'll hit play. This is the Tao cleaning robot. So you've probably seen these humanoid robots that are starting to creep up a little bit on your feed and they have various purposes. This one is a cleaning robot. And it is actually a remote operated fleet of them in San Francisco. They'll get out of a van and go into your house and clean your house through a remote operated, uh, somebody with a controller.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  And so this is what will be going in your house.

• 1:03:11Andrew Manganelli?

  The point of it is to collect data, so maybe in the future they can actually clean your houses completely autonomously. But this is what he looks like.

• 1:03:25Speaker 00

  Oh, his little tiny head.

• 1:03:27Andrew Manganelli?

  We're trying to describe his head. He also has claws, but it's kind of like a router?

• 1:03:31Speaker 00

  His head looks exactly, it looks like the router I had in 2006.

• 1:03:36Speaker 00

  But, and giving him a face, like, I understand why they would do that, but I can't understand why they wouldn't give him a more attractive face. And also, why are you dressing your robot?

• 1:03:48Andrew Manganelli?

  Like XL clothes.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  That one I never understood.

• 1:03:50Andrew Manganelli?

  He, um, this next clip is my favorite where he's using like a Windex spray bottle on, and his claws just cannot figure out.

• 1:03:58Speaker 00

  I feel like I, I truly, in the past 18 months, have started to feel like, well, I'm old now. Like, I'm too old. I don't understand the world anymore. It's passing me by.

• 1:04:10Speaker 00

  This definitely feels like, why would you put shoes on a robot? Why would you put big, big saggy pants on a robot?

• 1:04:18Speaker 03

  We put shoes on a horse.

• 1:04:20Speaker 00

  Okay, that's fair. That's fair. But, uh.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:26Andrew Manganelli?

  Would you pay? How much was it?

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  How?

• 1:04:28Andrew Manganelli?

  It was like 50 an hour or something like that?

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:04:30Andrew Manganelli?

  And also you now have a person remote operating. Yeah.

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  Who, I mean, who's operating it? Like, are we gonna get in a situation where the person is just screw, like, you know, if they could easily break stuff in your house?

• 1:04:44Andrew Manganelli?

  Yes.

• 1:04:45Speaker 00

  And not only that, it looks like the actual process of spraying a spray bottle is very difficult for the tower.

• 1:04:51Andrew Manganelli?

  I forgot to put it in, but for some reason, there's a video of him washing his hands, which makes no sense, or claws, I should say. If you go to their website, the Terms of Service section is the longest part of the website because of all those, uh, what if it breaks something? What if, yeah, it's.

• 1:05:08Speaker 00

  I mean, if I'm not there, like, the operator could just have the robot do whatever.

• 1:05:12Andrew Manganelli?

  Whatever, yeah. Uh, we're gonna wrap up with some rapid fire questions. A couple here, preferred podcast playback speed?

• 1:05:21Speaker 00

  Normal speed.

• 1:05:22Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay.

• 1:05:23Speaker 00

  I have a, I have some really, uh, strong emotions about people listening to my show at like 1.25 speed.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:05:30Andrew Manganelli?

  Do you want to do a 30 second pitch of your emotions on? Cause our other host who is not here today is a 2X? I think he's asked for more.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  He's on to three now. He's on to three. It's diabolical.

• 1:05:41Speaker 00

  I mean, the whole point of the show that we're making is like, the pacing is deliberate, the scoring's deliberate. And if you are playing it at three times speed, you know, it's like, would you watch, would you watch The Odyssey at three times speed?

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  That's exactly, David.

• 1:05:57Speaker 00

  I'm not saying that my, I'm not saying that every episode of my podcast is Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. I want to be very clear about that.

• 1:06:04Andrew Manganelli?

  We will. That is the title of this episode. Do you have a podcast player of choice?

• 1:06:08Speaker 00

  Uh, I use Overcast. It just feels like the most unobtrusive and easy to use.

• 1:06:12Andrew Manganelli?

  Fair. Uh, is there a piece of tech from your past that you miss?

• 1:06:17Speaker 00

  I used to have an Casio SK1 keyboard. It was one of the first sampling keyboards. You could press a button on it and talk into a little tiny microphone on it and it would give you like three seconds of sample time. And then you could play that sample all the way up and down the keyboard. It would get faster the higher you got and slower the lower you got.

• 1:06:36Speaker 00

  They are still around, but you know, I got it for $29.99 when it came out. They're now like 150, 200 bucks. I keep waiting to find one at a garage sale or something.

• 1:06:45Speaker 03

  Those, I know what you're talking about and like, they sound so good because the anti-alias filter on them is so good and they only sample at like 10K and they're way too expensive on eBay.

• 1:06:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're so expensive.

• 1:06:58Speaker 03

  The premium you get for that low sample rate is insane.

• 1:07:03Speaker 00

  I, uh, I listened to an interview with LP, the guy from Run the Jewels, and he was like, yeah, the way I got started making beats was I had a Casio SK1 and I would just sample things I liked and I would just play them at the right speed and then, uh, use another tape tech to put drums on it and then like, then then tape the SK1 samples over the drums on the thing. And I was like, yeah, I wasn't smart enough to do that, but.

• 1:07:26Andrew Manganelli?

  I mean, on the same topic of audio gear, uh, you're big into audio and music making. Is there an, uh, audio equipment grail you have?

• 1:07:35Speaker 00

  I mean, you know, there's the, um, there is a Yamaha keyboard that they use to make Blade Runner. That's what I want.

• 1:07:44Speaker 03

  Alex. Alex, boy, do I have a story for you. Because last year, a fan of the show reached out to me and said, hi, I'm a composer on staff with Hans Zimmer.

• 1:07:55Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 1:07:57Speaker 03

  Who, uh, if I remember correctly, scored, uh, the modern Blade Runner. I really hope I'm getting it right. Please look that up. Uh, the modern Blade Runner. And when I went to Hans's studio, they had, it's a YS60, right? That's what you're talking about? Or the Y? Also look that up.

• 1:08:13Speaker 00

  I think it's the C7, I think it's the C78.

• 1:08:16Speaker 03

  It's the C78. I saw that exact one. Cause Hans has it from the original Vangelis score of Blade Runner.

• 1:08:23Speaker 00

  That is so cool.

• 1:08:25Speaker 03

  I have physically touched the exact instrument you are describing.

• 1:08:28Speaker 00

  I'm so jealous. You know what's crazy too, is that that was not only used to make the beautiful score to the original Blade Runner, it was also used to make the worst song ever made, Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  The worst song ever made. I'm gonna write that down.

• 1:08:42Andrew Manganelli?

  In Reply All, episode 116, you learned about the phrase, trust the process. With that knowledge, how excited are you for LeBron joining the 76ers?

• 1:08:50Speaker 00

  You, this, what you're, this is, it's like you're speaking Polish to me right now. I, I don't know. I'm, I'm either super excited or very upset, whichever is the right answer.

• 1:09:00Andrew Manganelli?

  Ellis is a huge 76ers fan. I, I saw the connection. I had to, it's the big news in the NBA is LeBron's going to the 76ers.

• 1:09:07Speaker 00

  Uh, my, my son during the World Cup kept talking about Ronaldo and Messi. And I thought I was just one guy named Ronaldo Messi. I had no idea it was two dudes.

• 1:09:19Andrew Manganelli?

  A good player.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:20Andrew Manganelli?

  Um, and then, so we have one question left for you. Um, you've been very gracious with your time, but how fast do you think you can type the alphabet?

• 1:09:27Speaker 00

  Oh, that's a great question.

• 1:09:29Andrew Manganelli?

  Well, we're here to find out that question.

• 1:09:30Speaker 00

  Uh, I think I can do it in 15 seconds.

• 1:09:34Andrew Manganelli?

  15 seconds. So on our podcast, we have a leaderboard of every guest that's ever been here. Um, and there's a website to how fast you can type the alphabet.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  Split it on the computer?

• 1:09:43Andrew Manganelli?

  We would love to do it with you right now. We give everyone three chances to do it. And then we, if you've ever seen Top Gear, they have the like, the guests do the test track. This is our version of that for waveform.

• 1:09:53Speaker 00

  I feel like, just judging by the way that Ellis looks.

• 1:09:57Andrew Manganelli?

  15 is pretty rough.

• 1:09:58Speaker 00

  Covered his mouth when I said that.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  But the way this works is you're typing A through Z and it only advances once you hit the next letter. Yep, it's screen recording. So basically if you hit B and then miss C and then hit D through Z, it won't advance until you hit C.

• 1:10:12Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  So it has to go all the way through Z and then do not hit enter at the end.

• 1:10:15Andrew Manganelli?

  Would you prefer a different keyboard or are you good?

• 1:10:16Speaker 00

  No, I'm good with this.

• 1:10:17Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay, perfect.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 1:10:18Andrew Manganelli?

  So when you're ready.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  We give every guest three tries, so no pressure. Whenever you're ready, just give it your.

• 1:10:23Speaker 00

  I don't know how you could say no pressure.

• 1:10:26Andrew Manganelli?

  You don't have to play by play.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  No pressure, but there's a leaderboard.

• 1:10:28Andrew Manganelli?

  We will attempt to play by play over here and, um, all focus.

• 1:10:32Speaker 00

  Okay. All right, I just gotta clear my head and get ready for this. And here we go.

• 1:10:40Andrew Manganelli?

  This sounds good.

• 1:10:45Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:10:46Speaker 00

  Seven seconds?

• 1:10:48Andrew Manganelli?

  I think that's a really solid start.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  Much faster than you thought.

• 1:10:51Andrew Manganelli?

  Half.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. Give it two more.

• 1:10:53Andrew Manganelli?

  I think if you reset or press space, it'll go again.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Or enter.

• 1:10:56Andrew Manganelli?

  Cool.

• 1:10:57Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:11:02Speaker 00

  Oh, it started over.

• 1:11:04Andrew Manganelli?

  Just start again.

• 1:11:05Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:11:05Andrew Manganelli?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:11Andrew Manganelli?

  I'm interested, people either get way better or immediately realize their first try was the best.

• 1:11:16Speaker 00

  Uh, well, okay, this time I got 9.5 because I I misread the thing. So, okay, one more try.

• 1:11:21Speaker 03

  I have a selection of stressful music I could play.

• 1:11:23Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, please. Do you have like Flight of the Bumblebee or something?

• 1:11:26Speaker 03

  Not exactly, but I have I have some stuff, don't worry.

• 1:11:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, hit me.

• 1:11:29Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:11:31Speaker 00

  Oh, this is perfect. I feel like I'm on Who Wants to be a Millionaire or or the weakest link. All right, here we go.

• 1:11:43Speaker 00

  Six seconds, 6.2.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  Hey. Do you wanna? That's really nice.

• 1:11:47Andrew Manganelli?

  Where would that fall? Who's he in between on the leaderboard?

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, how do you think? How do you think? So we've had a bunch of guests on the show. Everybody goes through and and types the alphabet. How do you think you did? 6.2 seconds is pretty nice.

• 1:11:57Speaker 00

  I think that I'm like solidly in the middle. Like, I think that I'm median.

• 1:12:01Andrew Manganelli?

  I think you're right after Dr. Mike, if you know who he is.

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  I don't. Slightly slower than Dr. Mike.

• 1:12:07Andrew Manganelli?

  Slightly slower than Dr. Mike. And then, uh, underneath, you probably don't know them. They're called So Crispy Media. They do a lot of, uh, YouTube CGI effects and stuff like that.

• 1:12:16Speaker 00

  Who is the record holder? Who's number one?

• 1:12:18Andrew Manganelli?

  Tom Scott.

• 1:12:19Speaker 00

  And how how fast?

• 1:12:21Andrew Manganelli?

  3.5.

• 1:12:22Speaker 00

  Holy moly.

• 1:12:24Andrew Manganelli?

  Went into his backpack and pulled out his gigantic Dell laptop that looks like he's had for 10 years because he's like, I'm the most comfortable on this keyboard I have to work.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:33Andrew Manganelli?

  And went into it.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  And then told him the rules and he was like, wait, wait, one second. Be right back.

• 1:12:38Andrew Manganelli?

  Um, then Cleo Abram, uh, Quinn of Snazzy Labs, he's another tech reviewer. And then Marquez is at fourth because Marquez is, um, annoyingly good at everything that he tries.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  I've done it faster. I just, I'm gonna leave that time.

• 1:12:49Andrew Manganelli?

  Pretty fast and they give me, I'm so cool.

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  I think I could do three. I just haven't.

• 1:12:53Andrew Manganelli?

  You're well within the top half, though, out of maybe 25-ish people, so.

• 1:12:57Speaker 00

  I'm honored. But, you know, I feel like I haven't played Typing of the Dead in a decade.

• 1:13:03Andrew Manganelli?

  Okay.

• 1:13:03Speaker 00

  But I I was really like, I love that game.

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  Ever have is huge. That is a really big advantage.

• 1:13:09Andrew Manganelli?

  You never typed the alphabet, though. Who types the whole alphabet?

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  Exactly, which is why you think you're gonna do it in 20 seconds and then you just just just kill it.

• 1:13:16Andrew Manganelli?

  Flow, yeah.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  Amazing. Alex, thank you so much for your time.

• 1:13:19Speaker 00

  Oh, my God, guys, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, if people want to find you anywhere or find Hyperfixed, where should they go?

• 1:13:27Speaker 00

  Uh, we are Hyperfixed Pod everywhere on the internet. Um, so you can find us on all social media sites and hyperfixedpod.com and just Hyperfixed on any, um, RSS player. And, you know, one day, a Hyperfixed.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  Youtube.com.

• 1:13:42Speaker 00

  Pod on YouTube.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  I'm hoping for it. I'm hoping for it.

• 1:13:45Andrew Manganelli?

  Seriously, thank you so much.

• 1:13:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:13:58Speaker 00

  Uh, the difficulties are that the industry is completely different than it was when I started. When I started, like, again, long-form narrative podcasts.

• 1:14:06Speaker 03

  Sorry, can you get, uh, take it from industry is so different? I, bye-bye.

• 1:14:10Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 1:14:12Andrew Manganelli?

  Never mind, leave that part.

• 1:14:14Speaker 00

  I think I'm just gonna bail if that's it.

• 1:14:17Speaker 00

  Uh, um.